


Your Own Body is Your Front-Row Seat

by susieboo



Category: Black Friday - Team StarKid, The Guy Who Didn't Like Musicals - Team StarKid
Genre: (imagine that sung to the same tune as 'hermione can't draw'), (oh my god they didn't consider the implications), Alien Invasion, Alternate Universe, Autistic Hannah Foster, Dark Comedy, F/M, Non-Binary Ethan Green, POV Third Person, basically this is what was going on during TGWDLM for these three, ethan can't spell, they didn't consider the implications
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-03-15
Updated: 2020-03-15
Packaged: 2021-02-28 19:20:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,746
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23112343
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/susieboo/pseuds/susieboo
Summary: Lex and Ethan have been preparing to run off to California with Hannah for a year now. They just need to wait until they have enough money, and a solid game plan in place.But when everyone in Hatchetfield starts singing and dancing in some weird hivemind, that's when it's time to say "fuck the game plan" and just hit the road.[Five chapter fic about what Ethan, Lex, and Hannah were doing during the events of TGWDLM. Compliant tothatcanon. Ethan/Lex, with Hannah rounding out their little family.]
Relationships: Lex Foster/Ethan Green
Comments: 8
Kudos: 59





	Your Own Body is Your Front-Row Seat

**Author's Note:**

> You know what's a fun way to ride out self-quarantine during a global pandemic? Write fanfic about a show that centers around a global pandemic... _of song_.

The apocalypse began not with a bang, but with a song and a dance.

As always, it had been Hannah who realized something was odd first, and, as always, it had taken some time before Ethan and Lex caught on, too. Well, they noticed when a freakin' meteor had crashed to Earth and landed right in their sleepy hometown of Hatchetfield, Michigan. They were clueless and ignorant, not _blind_. Nor were they deaf. Everyone, from the dock workers on the edge of town to Lex in the stockroom of Toy Zone, heard the eardrum-splitting _BOOM_.

The meteor had scored a direct hit on the Starlight Theatre, and it was a miracle no one was hurt. No one, that is, except for the unlucky stage crew of _Mamma Mia!_ , who had been backstage when the touchdown happened.

Thank God no one of importance had been lost.

The shelves in the stockroom had shaken, some stray items falling to the floor, but otherwise, they hadn't felt it too badly at Toy Zone. While Frank tried to smooth things over with the startled customers - "Nothing to worry about, ladies and gentlemen, probably just a small earthquake, no reason to stop shopping!" - Lex felt her phone buzz in her back pocket. She wasn't surprised to see it was Ethan, who had been tasked with watching Hannah until Lex's shift ended - though Lex was often unsure of who was babysitting who.

**ETHAN:** holy shit what was that

After a glance over her shoulder confirmed that she was alone, she sent back:

**LEX:** frank is guessing an earthquake but i don't think we get those in michigan?? idk. how's hannah

**ETHAN:** freaked out. tryin to calm her down.....when do u get off

**LEX:** 2 hrs

**ETHAN:** ugggggghhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh lexxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

**LEX:** ok ignoring u now. hang tight til i get out of here

**ETHAN:** noooooooOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO DON'T ABANDEN MEEEEEEEEEE

* * *

Ethan groaned when Lex didn't text him back, though he couldn't really blame her - her shithead boss was probably looking for any excuse to fire her. Back in her first few weeks of her tenure at Toy Zone, he'd take Hannah and slip into the stock room to see her, or hang out at the register when things were slow. (Which, given that it was an actual, IRL, brick-and-mortar toy store in the year of their Lord 2018, was _often_.) But Frank didn't like Lex, and he liked Ethan even less. He didn't even like Hannah, which, as far was Ethan was concerned, was serious cause to question his humanity.

With two more hours to kill until Lex was free, he was sort of at a loss. He'd blown through most of his money - what little didn't go to paying his share of the rent on his small apartment - trying to fix his jalopy. Not that he regretted it. He and Lex and Hannah were going to California, come hell or highwater, and they needed a car that was in good condition if they were going to make it. Especially if they were going to spend some nights sleeping in it - which they likely would, to save money on hotels.

God. Here he was, barely nineteen, and he was thinking about ways to save money and travel responsibility, like a goddamn parent. The things he did for love.

"How we doing, Banana?" he asked. They were waiting out in the food court, nursing some smoothies he'd bought them a couple hours earlier, so no one would complain about them loitering at the same table all evening. He'd gotten Hannah from school, since Lex's shift had started at noon, and had killed the first hour or so "helping" Hannah with her homework. (Even though, honestly, she probably got better grades when he _didn't_ help.) Then, they'd fallen into their usual routine of playing cards, I Spy, MASH, and any other game you could play for free. If it weren't the fact that his roommates were, frankly, bigger creeps than Lex's boss, he would've taken her back to his apartment.

"The crash..." she said softly, not quite meeting his eyes.

"Yeah, that was weird," he agreed. "But I'm sure no one got hurt."

(In fact, several people got hurt.)

"The crash brought something."

He frowned. Hannah said stuff like that sometimes - cryptic, confusing stuff that sounded like it was part of a prophecy from a video game or something. When they were all kids, adults had attributed it to an overactive imagination, or a need for attention, but Ethan had always felt like it was more than that. Mostly because, more often than not... she was right.

"I dunno... I mean, Lex says it was probably just an earthquake."

"No. No. She's wrong."

"What do you think the crash brought, Banana?" He thought about making a joke about aliens or something, but he didn't want her to think he was making fun of her. She got enough of that at school.

"Something bad."

Well. _That_ was nice and ominous.

Hannah looked directly at him, then, meeting his eyes - which, even for people she liked and trusted, was pretty rare. Under normal circumstances, he would've met her with a smile. But he couldn't smile, not when her gaze was so afraid. "Webby says - Webby says to be careful. To stay away from the blue at all costs."

"Huh." Ethan didn't know what else to say. It wasn't that he took Webby's word as gospel - Webby wasn't even real - but Hannah was a smart kid, with good instincts. And while he'd expected her to be a little spooked by the earthquake (or whatever it was), he hadn't expected her to be _this_ upset.

On instinct, Ethan got his phone out of his pocket again, this time checking Facebook to see if anyone had said anything about the noise yet.

Sure enough, the local news station had already jumped on it, and a few people had shared the same article.

_**MYSTERIOUS METEOR MANEUVERS MAMMA MIA MAYHEM!** _

(Ethan wasn't 100% sure what "maneuvers" meant - something to do with cow shit, maybe? - but even _he_ was sort of appalled by the alliteration. Not that he knew that was the word for it.)

A meteor had crashed right into the theatre downtown. 

Right when Hannah was talking about something bad coming to Hatchetfield.

Okay. There was no denying - this was all pretty strange.

Soon enough, they'd find out that they didn't even know what strange _was_.

* * *

Frank Pricely was singing.

And it wasn't one of his odes to capitalism, either. Well - it was. But it wasn't. 

Most of Frank's songs were made up on the fly, with forced rhymes and the odd flat tone, though Lex had to admit, he could carry a tune better than most. But today, his pitch was... well, for lack of a better term, it was pitch-perfect. Like he'd worked on this for a long time. While spending weeks composing a whole-ass song about how much he loved money wouldn't have been at all out of character, he tended to keep his singing to the break room or stockroom, out of earshot from the customers, who might look at him weird. (His employees also looked at him weird, but, well, they were being paid to put up with it.)

But the next morning, Frank was singing, full-on Broadway style showtune singing, with a dance routine to match, and not only was the song good, he was doing it right in plain sight, right by the front doors. She would've laughed if it wasn't so goddamn bizarre.

The weirdest part was, no one else thought this was weird. No one else was staring. No one else seemed to hear.

"Ohhhh-kay, too early for this shit," she muttered. She'd arrived at four AM for the early shift, and still had four hours to go until she could leave. Ethan was watching Hannah again, since the middle school was closed for a faculty training day. If they were a normal family, maybe Lex could've spent the day with her, taking her to a movie or a bowling alley or something else fun. Instead, she dumped her on her boyfriend (or datemate, depending on the term he preferred on any given day), and was forced to work her miserable job at a truly miserable hour.

Watching her miserable boss sing like Andrew Rannells.

Lex had come out of the stock room to ask him a question, but at the moment, you couldn't pay her to go near him - which was good, because that was _things_ got really weird.

" _Just a typical day_!" he belted - and suddenly, every customer in the store (all three of them) was behind him, all posed with bright, perfect smiles on their faces. They were swaying to music that wasn't playing, as Frank continued to sing: " _That's got me feeling, in a beautiful way! No rhyme or reason..._ " And he looked right at Lex, who was frozen in place. " _We could sing a duet_!"

"...What."

" _Dance a style or two, or I'll make you a bet - just a smile will do_!" He jumped up onto the counter, with all the dexterity of a much younger man. " _Sometimes I just wanna shout on top of roof and mountain tops, all the world is paved in gold_!"

This was, without a doubt, the weirdest fucking thing Lex had ever seen.

" _Yesterday is retroactive, got myself a new perspective, I strut it up and down the road_!"

The joy in his voice was palpable, but so... artificial. Like it came out of a can. Was she hallucinating this, or was she _actually_ watching Frank Pricely sing and do cartwheels across the counter, while all the customers smiled and danced along with him?

" _So I throw out my worries, and my old skin away, doing what I want to, on this la dee dah dah day_!"

When the customers chimed in with the harmony, Lex turned on her heel and bolted back to the stock room, locking herself in there until they stopped.

This was way, way out of her paygrade. Whatever this was - and somehow, she felt that it could not be anything good - she wanted no part of it.

When the singing ceased, she opened the door a crack, and peeked outside.

For a moment, all was quiet.

And then they started again. Like clockwork.

On the _fifth_ round of "La Dee Dah Day," Lex decided it was time to call in sick, and slip out the back door.

* * *

Hannah and Ethan looked pretty surprised to see Lex early, both sitting up as she approached their table in the food court. She was talking the second she got close enough for them to hear her, tossing her Toy Zone name tag on the table and plopping herself down next to him. "Okay, _please_ tell me absolutely nothing exciting happened all day, because I have just seen the fucking weirdest--"

"People are singing. And not in a terrible improv flash mob way. Like. It's good. And horrifying." Ethan had decided to just rip the band-aid off. That was the best way to handle disturbing weirdness, right? "Like - Hannah will tell you, we saw it all day!"

"Waitwaitwait - you saw everyone singing and dancing like goddamn Disney characters, all in unison?" she asked. When she said it out loud, it didn't sound nearly as unnerving as it actually had been to see in person.

Ethan and Hannah nodded.

"That's what I saw, too!" It was nice to have confirmation she wasn't crazy, at least. "My boss was singing, and everyone joined in. It was fucking bizarre."

"What was he singing about?" he asked.

"At first? Money, sales, that sort of thing. But when other people started singing, too, they just started singing about... I dunno, going about their day, I guess? Except they were all weirdly happy. Calling it a..."

"La dee dah dah day?" he guessed.

She jolted, like someone had given her a small electric shock. "Exactly! Is that what you heard?"

"Yeah, everyone on the street was doing it."

"In perfect unison?"

" _Perfect_. It was freaky. And did you... I dunno, did you want to join them?" he asked. "Because I did, kind of."

"Yes! What is _with_ that? I hate singing! But the more I watched them, the more I wanted to get up and dance along with them."

" _You_ wanted to join in a group activity? Christ. What the hell is going on?"

Hannah piped up then. "It's - it's a hive! Everyone sings and dances and is happy, all together..."

"When you put it like that, it sounds pretty rad," Ethan said. "But I dunno. The whole thing feels a little... Stepford."

Lex nodded in agreement. "This isn't normal. Something is going on, but I have no clue what. Is there something in the water? Or..."

The three of them all looked up at once, in a classic movie moment, when the heroes come to the same, startling epiphany in perfect unison.

The meteor.

"Holy shit," Lex finally said. "D'you two think...?"

"I dunno. I don't know anything about meteors," Ethan said with a shrug. "Or singing. Or hive minds. Or choreography. Or taxes. Or nutrition. Or how to ride a bike."

Lex tuned him out as he continued the extremely long list of things he didn't know anything about, the wheels in her head turning.

If Hannah was right... if this was some sort of hivemind... they were officially in the realm of science fiction. And that meant they had to start thinking like they were in a science fiction flick. So. This could be anything. Some weird-ass virus, aliens, mind control... Didn't really matter. What mattered was, at the moment, none of them were "infected." But if they stuck around, and were exposed to whatever the hell this was, they'd become singing, dancing freaks, too. And something was off about them. Ethan was right; it was pretty Stepford. Lex was pretty sure she didn't want to know what happened to your brain when it got programmed to know the lyrics to the hivemind's tune.

When she tuned back in, Ethan was still going.

"Or couponing. Or how to do a cartwheel... Or stock markets - I'm not even sure what the stock market _is_ , to be honest. Eh, it's probably not important."

"We've gotta go," she said abruptly. "California. We gotta go now."

Ethan's eyes lit up. "Holy shit, are you serious? I thought you wanted to plan more."

"Fuck planning. If we can get out of here, if we can get ahead of this, then we need to go now. Leave Hatchetfield behind to become a discount version of _Hamilton_ , and start our new life. Tomorrow, we should just get what we need for the road, and get the hell out of Dodge."

He grinned at her. "Holy shit. You're serious."

"Damn right I am. Maybe this is the kick in the ass we needed. Like a sign."

He leaned across the table and kissed her, to which Hannah gave a lovingly exaggerated grimace. "We," he said, "are getting the _fuck_ out of here."

So that was that. They were going to do a goddamn Supermarket Sweep-style supplies gathering the next day, give Hatchetfield one final "fuck you," and then floor it across the country before anyone could stop them. It was going to be stressful, but it'd be the start of a new life, and that was beautiful. And, hey, in a few years, Ethan was sure that they'd look back at this whole thing and laugh - like, _"Man, remember when we just dropped everything and bolted? When we saw everyone singing in the streets and just said 'peace!' That was crazy! Gosh, I'm so glad we got out of there. So, Lex, do you think you'll agree to be in Mr. Peele's movie, or Ms. Gerwig's?"_

From where Ethan was standing, the future looked hella bright. And for the first time in years, Lex was feeling optimistic, too.

But of course, nothing was ever that easy. The fact that people had begun bursting into spontaneous choruses and choreography was going to throw a major wrench into things, in ways that they couldn't imagine. At the time, they just saw it and thought, "Well, _that's_ fucking weird."

At that moment, they didn't see any real reason to be scared. Not yet.

And given what sort of people Lex Foster and Ethan Green were... it probably goes without saying that they didn't consider the implications.

**Author's Note:**

> Okay, before y'all say anything: I've worked as a theater tech (both stage crew and in the booth) on and off for eight years now, I'm legally allowed to joke about techies being expendable. I'm a protected class, motherfuckers.
> 
> Anyway, I'll get the next chapter up as soon as I can. (God knows I've got the time.) Until then, I'd love to hear your initial thoughts below! Thanks for reading!


End file.
